d in Germans at home and
abroad during this period of their Fatherland's peril. It is this
curious and wholly German brand of sentimentality which is the
cohering force in the various and extraordinarily clever devices by
which modern Germany has been solidified. It is a sentimentality
capable of rising to real exaltation that no other nation is capable
of, and that alone should make the American pro-German pause and
meditate upon a future United States where native individualism was
less and less reluctantly heading for the iron jaws of the
Prussianized American machine; and, furthermore, upon the weird
spectacle of the real gladiatorial contest--German sentimentality
wrestling in a death grapple with American downright unpicturesque
common sense.

During the seven years that I lived in Munich I learned to like
Germany better than any state in Europe. I liked and admired the
German people; I never suffered from an act of rudeness, and I never
was cheated out of a penny. I was not even taxed until the year before
I left, because I made no money out of the country and turned in a
considerable amount in the course of a year. When my maid went to the
Rathaus to pay my taxes, (moderate enough,) the official apologized,
saying that he had disliked to send me a bill, but the increased cost
of the army compelled the country to raise money in every way
possible. This was in 1908. The only disagreeable German I met during
all those years was my landlord, and as we always dodged each other in
the house or turned an abrupt corner to avoid encounter on the street,
we steered clear of friction. And he was the only landlord I had.

I left Munich with the greatest regret, and up to the moment of the
declaration of war I continued to like Germany better than any country
in the world except my own.

The reason I left was significant. I spent, as a rule, seven or eight
months in Munich, then a similar period in the United States, unless I
traveled. I always returned to my apartment with such joy that if I
arrived at night I did not go to bed lest I forget in sleep how
overjoyed I was to get back to that stately and picturesque city, so
prodigal with every form of artistic and aesthetic gratification. But
that was just the trouble. For as long a time after my return as it
took to write the book I had in mind I worked with the stored American
energy I had within me; then for months and in spite of good
resolutions and some self-anathem